Location: East Providence High SchoolGrade: 10-12 biology (all levels)Date of Visit: October 22, 2013 In The Passionate Teacher, Ron Fried describes the Game of School (GOS) as what happens when teachers and students forsake intellectual work and instead engage in their classes as rituals. Take this opportunity to consider this chapter in light of some of the the other experiences that you've had this semester to answer at
least three of the following questions:
What elements of the game of school are you seeing in your placements?
How have you seen teachers fight the game of school in their classes?
What features can you plan into your units that might discourage the GOS?
Finally, what impact will this description of the GOS have on your own approach to teaching as expressed in your teaching philosophy?
Observation:During the two honors classes that my cooperating teacher instructs, they begin the class by reviewing the previous night's homework. They spend the first five to ten minutes doing this activity. The students were then instructed to take notes from the textbooks in the back of the classroom for the remainder of the period. This note-taking exercise progresses for about an hour, as the school has block scheduling but there are no bells to signal the official start or end of classes. This took place in both honors classes on two different occasions on which I visited. However, the atmosphere in the college prep and collaborative classes, which comprise the rest of my teacher's schedule, are very different. The teacher and her co-teacher (a special educator) do active readings, in-class activities, and guided note-taking with graphic organizers. Reflection:I found my experience at East Providence to be quite paradoxical. On one hand, my cooperating teacher seems to be writing the manual for the "game of school" with the honors classes and then burning that manual in the lower-level classes. The honors students are expected to take their own notes and study materials, and for the most part they do. I personally think that they are wasting precious amounts of class time doing this work. Note-taking skills are extremely important, especially for college preparedness, but it shouldn't encompass the overwhelming majority of class time on a regular basis. In contrast, the middle and lower-level classes did many more activities that involved cooperative learning and active discussion of the content being delivered. These students showed much less boredom in class and overall grasped the content better. It is important to note that at this particular school, many of these policies are mandated by the school administration due to the new implementation of the Common Core State Standards. In order to discourage a hypothetical representation of the "game of school" in my unit plan, I intend to incorporate methods that are unlikely to be utilized in other classrooms. For example, one of my lessons involves making a "biome in a box," an activity where students will reconstruct the atmospheric and climatic conditions of different biomes in a shoe box using materials such as dirt, sand, and water. In regards to my approach to teaching as expressed in my teaching philosophy, this description of the "game of school" further supports my enthusiasm and penchant for inquiry-based laboratory learning. By doing hands-on activities that are unique and intriguing to students, they will hopefully be captivated by the content material and take something meaningful away from my lessons.
In The Passionate Teacher, Ron Fried describes the Game of School (GOS) as what happens when teachers and students forsake intellectual work and instead engage in their classes as rituals. Take this opportunity to consider this chapter in light of some of the the other experiences that you've had this semester to answer at
least three of the following questions:
Observation:During the two honors classes that my cooperating teacher instructs, they begin the class by reviewing the previous night's homework. They spend the first five to ten minutes doing this activity. The students were then instructed to take notes from the textbooks in the back of the classroom for the remainder of the period. This note-taking exercise progresses for about an hour, as the school has block scheduling but there are no bells to signal the official start or end of classes. This took place in both honors classes on two different occasions on which I visited. However, the atmosphere in the college prep and collaborative classes, which comprise the rest of my teacher's schedule, are very different. The teacher and her co-teacher (a special educator) do active readings, in-class activities, and guided note-taking with graphic organizers.
Reflection:I found my experience at East Providence to be quite paradoxical. On one hand, my cooperating teacher seems to be writing the manual for the "game of school" with the honors classes and then burning that manual in the lower-level classes. The honors students are expected to take their own notes and study materials, and for the most part they do. I personally think that they are wasting precious amounts of class time doing this work. Note-taking skills are extremely important, especially for college preparedness, but it shouldn't encompass the overwhelming majority of class time on a regular basis. In contrast, the middle and lower-level classes did many more activities that involved cooperative learning and active discussion of the content being delivered. These students showed much less boredom in class and overall grasped the content better. It is important to note that at this particular school, many of these policies are mandated by the school administration due to the new implementation of the Common Core State Standards. In order to discourage a hypothetical representation of the "game of school" in my unit plan, I intend to incorporate methods that are unlikely to be utilized in other classrooms. For example, one of my lessons involves making a "biome in a box," an activity where students will reconstruct the atmospheric and climatic conditions of different biomes in a shoe box using materials such as dirt, sand, and water. In regards to my approach to teaching as expressed in my teaching philosophy, this description of the "game of school" further supports my enthusiasm and penchant for inquiry-based laboratory learning. By doing hands-on activities that are unique and intriguing to students, they will hopefully be captivated by the content material and take something meaningful away from my lessons.